


Good Vibrations

by Adora_McClain



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bow and Catra are buddies, Catra is Bad at Feelings, Dancer Adora - Freeform, Deaf Adora, F/F, Mute Adora - Freeform, One Shot, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25557976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adora_McClain/pseuds/Adora_McClain
Summary: To say Catra was pissed would be an understatement. You can imagine Catra’s frustration due to the blond sitting in the middle of ‘Brightmoon Beans!’ during finals week.“I’m gonna kill her,” Catra seethed over to Bow. She could feel her headache beginning to throb with the beat of blondies playlist. And when I say blasting, I mean this kid’s laptop speakers might burst.Students around the café gave her dirty looks, but no one spoke up, rather cranking the volume of their own headphones up, trying to drown out the inconsiderate girl sporting an ‘Etheria University, Dance Team!’ jacket........Adora is a deaf dance student at Etheria University, who accidentally pisses off a cute engineering student named Catra, and ends up placing a bet with the girl on wether she can really dance. In trying to prove her wrong, she finds herself falling for the short-tempered girl with different coloured eyes.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer
Comments: 23
Kudos: 293





	Good Vibrations

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to write something other then my flower shop au lol

To say Catra was pissed would be an understatement. 

Let me paint a little picture of University for all you youngins out there: you don’t so much as talk in a college coffee shop. You want to work on a group project so you pick the table in the corner? Sure, go ahead. You’re tutoring someone? Okay, just keep it quiet. You want to have a conversation with your friend? Then go to a fucking bar. 

So you can imagine Catra’s frustration due to the blond sitting in the middle of ‘Brightmoon Beans!’ during finals week, blasting some sort of weird dance music while typing away, not looking bothered at all? 

Fucking asshole. 

“I’m gonna kill her,” Catra seethed over her quantum theory textbook to Bow. She could feel her headache beginning to throb with the beat of blondies playlist. And when I say blasting, I mean this kid’s laptop speakers might burst. 

Students around the café gave her dirty looks, but no one spoke up, rather cranking the volume of their own headphones up, trying to drown out the inconsiderate girl sporting an ‘ Etheria University, Dance Team !’ jacket. “Catra…” Bow said nervously over his own books. “Just leave it alone, everyone else is.” 

“That’s the problem with our generation!” She whisper-screamed back, “we’re all socially-anxious introverts afraid to call an asshole out!” She huffed, standing up from her chair and stalking over to the noise, Bow following at her heels to make sure his friend didn’t drop kick the girl and get them banned from yet another coffee shop. 

A few months ago someone cut in front of them at Mermista’s café and she knocked two of the guys teeth out. Another time, when Bow had been wearing his favouite bomber jacket which had the Bi-flag crested in a heart on the front, someone had called him a ‘pretend fag’ and Catra had alsmot hospitlaized the guy. Nonetheless, Bow loved his friend, but knew how… out of hand she could escalate things. 

“Hey, prick, you know that there are other people here, right?” Catra barked at the girl, angrily gesturing around the cramped and crowded coffee house, stuffy with the air of sleep-deprived teens and stressed-beyond-their-years twenty-something year olds. Everyone who had not blasted their music to the point of possible hearing-loss to drown out the dance chick’s music starred at the small scene Catra was creating. 

The blond, who Catra hated to admit was hot as all hell, didn’t so much as turn her pony-tailed head towards Catra. Her typing never so much as wavered, her concentration on whatever last-minute essay she was typing up seemed to be unbroken, feeding Catra’s rage towards this jerk even more.

Bow placed a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder to try to calm her from kicking the pretty girl’s face in, but Catra just shrugged him off. “Hey, Blondie, I’m talking to you!” Catra shouted, gaining almost every eye in the shop, even the barista’s pretending to wipe the counter down in order to watch the scene. “Are you just stupid or rude?” Catra bit, standing at the girls side. 

The girl didn’t even look at her. 

“Hey, bitch, you then you can just-” Catra screamed, throwing her hands and jostling the table as she spoke, the girl jumping up in surprise like she had been shot, wide, dark eyes looking up at Catra like saucers. This girl was so good at playing innocent that Catra even let the rest of her curse-ridden threats die on her lips, caught off guard by this jerk's beauty. How dare she have naturally blond hair and dark eyes, perfectly contrasting one another? What a bitch. 

She opened her mouth to speak, cheeks flushed in embarrassment, laptop still blaring some pop-music bullshit. 

Catra held up her hand, “save it, princess, you’re not the only person in the world that matters.” 

Frantically, the girl pointed to her ears, her hands flying in a language that Catra did not understand. 

Catra looked almost as modified as the deaf kid she had been publicly berating. 

Bow, stepping in immediately, quietly and politely signed something that Catra could only assume meant ‘You are literally blasting your music in the middle of this crowded-ass coffee shop during finals week’ because the girl shot up like a rocket, slamming her laptop so quickly Catra was afraid she had broken it. 

The girl then looked around the shop and realized that she had every eye in the shop on her. 

The girl looked absolutely mortified, like she was about to burst out crying. She began frantically circling a fist around her chest, which Bow whispered to Catra meant ‘sorry’, but Catra got that from context, and that the girl had been really good at lip-synching. 

The girl signed this a few more times before slipping her now quiet laptop off of the small wooden table, slung her bag off of the back of her chair, and was pushing past Catra and out of the tiny, cramped coffee shop before Catra could blink, her apology dying on her lips. 

Everyone else in the shop had apparently gotten second-hand embarrassment, looking down and pretending to read their textbooks, fake writing, and typing gibberish on their keyboards. 

Catra glanced at Bow, “well fuck.” 

……………….

  
  


Adora burst out of the coffee shop with tears in her eyes because holy FUCK she must have looked like an idiot!

Slipping her laptop into her backpack as she speed-walked down the sidewalk, she felt the panic-attack welling up in her chest as she whipped out her phone and texted Glimmer. 

_ ‘Holy fuck. Holyfuckholyfuckholyfuck. KILL ME!!’  _

Good ol’ Glimmer only took a good ten seconds to reply. Adora slowed down, leaning on a brick wall in the warm spring sun, opting that being deaf and mute and texting whilst walking down a crowded sidewalk was a flamboyantly bad idea. She pressed herself into the building's warm bricks as she watched the three little bubbles pop up as her best friend typed. 

_ ‘What happened?! Are you okay? Do you need me to come get u??’  _

Adora bit back tears, but a few still sung enough at the corners of her eyes for her to allow them to fall as she typed.  _ ‘I’m just outside of the Physics Building on campus,’  _ She sent, before relaying the events to her friend who had already texted back  _ ‘I’m OMW’  _ even though it was two-thirty and Adora knew that she was in class right now. 

Adora was halfway through typing when she felt a hand on her shoulder, and it nearly sent her jumping out of her skin. She knew it wasn’t Glimmer because one, her short, fire-cracker of a best friend could have never made it across campus that fast, and two, Glimmer would never in a million years tap her on the shoulder, she would wave her hand in Adora’s peripheral vision. 

Adora had a bad habit of zoning out while doing things like typing, which was, admittedly, a terrible habit to have when you can’t hear the world around you. 

Adora jumped up, willing her heartbeat to slow down before she passed out, whipping around and seeing the same drop-dead gorgeous girl who had been just about head to kill her in front of a cheering crowd about five minutes ago. 

The girl had dark, tanned skin which almost perfectly matched her long, wild, curly hair. She wore dark, ripped jeans and a tight red tank top that matched her sparkly lip gloss. The girl was drop dead gorgeous. Adora had noticed that when the girl had been screaming at her, she was naturally beautiful. She only wore lip gloss and winged eyeliner, and nothing else. If Adora hadn't been ready to drop dead from embarrassment she would have asked for her number. 

Though the girl wore no blush, she was flushed pink and out of breath. Had she chased her down the street? 

Adora made eye contact with her, suddenly remembering that she was crying. She wiped her face with the back of her hand as if the beautiful stranger hadn't seen it, just trying to save herself  _ some  _ dignity. 

The girl standing in front of her looked as if she hadn't thought this far ahead, looking just as embarrassed as her. She opened her mouth to speak, before seeming to remember how they had gotten into this whole predicament in the first place. Sometimes Adora hated ‘hearing people’. They looked like they didn’t know what to do with her. Sometimes she wished she had a voice just to scream,  _ Yes I speak english! Yes I can understand you! Just look at me when you fucking talk!  _ Finally the stranger opted to ask, “You read lips?” 

Adora nodded quickly, before signing and lip-synching, “ _ You?”  _

“Kinda…” The girl said with a sheepish smile, Adora weakly reciprocating. 

The woman then gave her a weird look before Adora noticed the familiar waving of her bestfriends hand in her peripheral. Smiling a little more genuinely now, she turned her head to look at her positively furious friend. 

“Is this the girl?” Glimmer asked, effortlessly signing as she spoke, the tanned girl immediately going paler in colour when she realized that that the blond girl had apparently already called in reinforcements. 

Adora nodded, signing  _ yes.  _

The girl nervously scratched the back of her head, “uh, yeah… look, I’m really sorry about that…” She was cut off by a cute boy, with dark skin and light eyes, running down the street. Adora watched Glimmer’s face fall from anger into something of a flustered surprise at the sight of the man. Even Adora could admit that he was  _ cute.  _

“Catra!” The boy called, and reading his lips, Adora immediately liked the name. It fit the girl to a T. Her eyes, her entire physique were very cat-like, agile, like she could scratch your eyes out just as quickly as she would scurry away at a loud noise. “You left all your stuff,” the boy remarked, handing the girl a worn black bookbag covered in hand-stitched patches. “And me!” 

The girl rolled her eyes, while the boy looked at Adora, immediately smiling. “Hey, I’m really sorry about what happened back there, my friend is kind of a hot-head.” The boy laughed, signing as he spoke, surprising Adora.

If first impressions meant anything then this Catra girl seems like she is black coffee, bitter but addictive. This boy seemed to be pure sugar, and they immediately evened eachother out. “I’m Bow,” the boy said. 

“You sign?” Glimmer asked, as the boy-  _ Bow _ , smiled. 

“Yeah,” he laughed, “my dad’s are pretty big on language, I speak most of them.” 

“Impossible,” Glimmer rolled, doing her best not to melt under the strangers gaze. 

“Try me,” the boy smirked, and Glimmer immediately began shouting every language she could think of, the boy responding in a ‘yes’ in whatever language she had said. Glimmer got more and more frustrated with each word. “Germen!” 

_ “Ja.”  _

“French?” 

_ “Oui.”  _

“Latin!” 

_ “Ita…”  _

“Gibberish!” 

“Not a real language…” 

_ “Augh!!” _

Adora was laughing, and though it was silent, she laughed with her whole body, holding her knuckles up to her bottom lip, and Catra was mesmerized to say the least. “Okay, enough!” Catra cut in, shaking her head from the trance this girl had the audacity to throw her in. “You guys can nerd out later, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, okay? I saw your sweat shirt and just assumed it was yours. I’m sorry I yelled at you.” 

Adora shot the girl a look, glaring at her, and Catra wished to see the girl laugh again. “What?” Adora signed, and though Adora lip-synched while she signed, Glimmer translated anyway, speaking for her. 

Catra rolled her eyes, “the jacket, Blondie, it says ‘Dance Team’ on it. We go to Ethieria too.”

Adora looked partly annoyed, partly furious, rolling her dark eyes around in her head at the girl. “So you don’t think I can dance?” She said, Glimmer’s voice growing angry, too, as she interpreted. 

“Uh…” Bow cut in, “no offense but… you’re kinda, you know…” 

“Deaf?” Glimmer asked, glaring at the boy, her sparkling eyes going narrow. 

“Oh, don’t make us feel bad for saying it,” Catra rolled, “how can you dance with no music.” 

“The beat,” Adora signed, Glimmer translating, before Adora’s soft, cold hands were on Catra’s warm skin, and she was gently tapping a rhythm against her skin. “See?” Adora mouthed.

Adora smirked a bit when she saw the woman deeply blush at the sudden touch, her cocky grin causing the women to lose her leverage and pull her hand from her grip. 

“Prove it,” Catra snorted, “ten bucks says you just flounce around the stage like an idiot. They just let you on the team out of pure sympathy.” 

Adora barely looked offended, she had been told shit like this her life. Instead, she just gave the most determined glare Catra had ever seen, like Catra had just put in her chips and folded on a full house, just because of this girl's bluff. 

Adora put a hand on Glimmer to calm her, instead pulling a black inked pen out of the side pocket of her red JanSport, once again grabbing the stranger's hand and writing the address to the school’s auditorium on her, followed by  _ ‘@ 12pm 2 night :p _ ’. 

“See you then,” Adora mouthed her with a little smirk. 

But this time Catra held her glare, smirking back at the girl before leaning in deadly close. “It’s a date, then.” 

Now it was Adora’s turn to embarrassingly blush, the pairs branching off in different directions down the street, both with the excitement of proving someone wrong alive in all of their hearts. 

……………

“Are you sure about this?” Bow sighed for the millionth time since this afternoon. 

Catra rolled her eyes as she turned the lock on their apartment door. Yeah, it was just cheap student housing, but the stale hallways never ceased to have the lingering smell of pot. “C’mon Bow, it’ll be fun to watch Blondie make a fool out of herself. Plus, then I’ll be ten bucks richer. With what we’re paying for tuition, I’ll take every penny I can get!” She said, cackling at her own joke as they walked down the stairs, Catra sliding down the banister. 

“What do you have against this girl anyway?” Bow called down to her, jumping down the two flights of stairs trying to keep up with her. 

Catra’s red converse hit the dirty, tiled floor as she hopped off of the banister, looking as though she was pondering the question for a moment, before pushing open the door into the warm, muggy night air, the streetlights being the only light. 

“I don’t have anything against her…” she said, thinking about it as she held the door for Bow, the two taking the sidewalk now, heading back towards the school. “I just hate it when people pity everyone different then them, and hand them stuff without them working for it. It’s just so condescending. And worst of all, it makes the person think they’re good at something when they’re not. Trust me, the nicest thing we can do this girl is tell her she’s terrible. Then maybe she can channel her energy into something useful.” 

“Oh…” Bow sang, leaning his shoulder into his friends lightly as they walked, their conversation bouncing off of walls in the quiet night. “So this is all to  _ help  _ the pretty girl we met today, oh okay. You know, that’s pretty nice of you…” 

Catra’s face flushed a little bit at the accusation, as she shoved her friend away and off the sidewalk, the boy chuckling as he fell into the empty street. “Oh yeah? Why are you even  _ coming  _ with me right now? This is  _ my  _ bet anyways. Oh, it wouldn’t have to do with the possibility of her loud mouth, pink haired friend tagging along, would it?” 

Bow began coughing on nothing, hand finding the back of his head, absentmindedly scratching at his hair. “I mean, if she’s gonna be there then that’s cool…” he mumbled, making Catra burst out laughing as they rounded the corner. 

In the distance was the big, brick building that Bow and Catra had never once stepped inside of, though it was their second year at Etheira U. Outside in the warm night was Adora and her little angry friend, leaning against the walls leaserly, waiting for the pair. 

A white dog with a pink unicorn collar and a vest that said ‘ SERVICE ANIMAL. DO NOT PET’  sat at her feet, growling as they approached. The hair on the back of Catra’s neck stood at attention. She had never been fond of dogs. 

Adora sighed something at the dog and it silenced. 

“Great, even the mutt can speak ASL,” Catra muttered as they approached. Catra tried not to stare for too long at Adora’s new outfit, a loose fitting, flouncy red ballet dress. Her hair was now down, curling perfectly at the bottom in the humidity. Screw her, for literally shining in the dark night. Screw. Her. 

“Hey, one more word and I’ll give Swifty the word to attack,” Glimmer threatened. 

Adora once again laughed with no sound, and it made Catra’s stupid little heart flutter. Traitor. 

_ “No he won’t,”  _ Adora signed with that stupid, friendly smile, being sure to enunciate extra for Catra. The dog, Swifty, circled the girls legs. “ _ Now, ready to lose?”  _

It took Catra a moment to read her lips, before she smirked, giving her head a little shake. “Not on your life, princess.” 

Adora spun on her heel, unhooking a key that had been dangling on the dog's collar, and unlocked the side door to the building. 

“Where’d you get a key to this place, princess?” Catra mused, but Adora’s back was to her, so she didn’t hear. 

“Adora’s here twenty-four seven,” Glimmer answered. “They just gave her a key so she’d stop asking them to unlock it for her every day at four AM. She leaves for class and coffee, that’s about it.” Glimmer explained as Adora eased the door open, the young group walking in. 

“When do you sleep?” Catra asked in disbelief, this time making sure that Adora was facing her when she had said it. 

Adora shrugged, “ _ I don’t.”  _

Catra bit her lip a bit but the smile still crept out. “Respect. Me neither,” she said, as she was an engineering student. 

She turned from Adora on the slick, echoing floor and had to stop from gaping. The auditorium was unlike anything she had ever seen. The ceiling went up a hundred feet. It was like if she had superpowers, she would come here to learn how to fly.

Seats upon seats seemed to fall over one another, like a sea of red velvet that could hold the whole town. Though it was big, beautiful and intimidating, the carpet made it still feel home-y. 

Glimmer noticed Bow’s eyes go wide too, from where they stood on the giant, black stage. “Just wait,” Glimmer smiled, letting her fingers gently slide across the man’s broad shoulders before dashing off to the side of the stage, and Bow had to swallow hard out of fear that his heart would pop right out of his throat. Catra laughed as she watched her friend turn bright red, and he cursed her when Glimmer’s back was still turned. 

Glimmer flipped a switch, and the whole auditorium erupted in giant, bright lights, like they were inside of the sun. 

Swifty barked at the excitement, it echoing off of the ceiling, as Bow and Catra couldn’t help but call out in surprise as the world around them became that much more beautiful. 

Swifty jumped up on his hind legs, spinning in happy little circles that made Adora laugh. 

“ _ Okay, okay,”  _ Adora smiled,  _ “You go sit, and prepare to be ten dollars poorer.”  _ She said with a gentle little shove at them towards the side stairs. 

Catra couldn’t help but smile. Damn, she liked this girl. And I mean  _ like like.  _ Like, if they had been on the playground she would have pulled her pigtails.

She suddenly felt dread in her chest at the thought of this cute deaf girl utterly fucking up. How would she tell her? Suddenly, she didn’t want to win. 

Though she showed none of this as she leisurely sat down on a felted chair, kicking up her feet onto the chair in front of her and leaning back a bit, Bow sitting next to her. 

The Glimmer girl sat next to Bow, but instead of sitting on the chair, she sat on the back of it so she was high up, singing something Catra did not understand up to her friend on the stage, who smiled back at her. 

The girl was wearing a flouncy, pleated purple skirt, and Catra couldn’t help but laugh to herself when she saw Bow’s eyes desperately trying not to stare at the girls exposed legs. 

Still, Catra found herself mesmerized with watching the blond girl in the stage lights, gently lacing up her pointe shoes, taking the glossy red ribbons and rhythmically wrapping them around her muscular legs before tying them back in two tight bows. Had her mouth always been dry? 

The mood immediately changed as the girl walked across to perfect center stage, holding a black remote over her head and pressing down a button until Taylor Swift came blaring from every corner of the auditorium at a painfully loud volume. 

It was Catra’s favourite song. 

_ ‘Exile’  _ came pouring over the room like a thick syrup, and Catra found herself questioning this entire situation. Though the song had a powerful piano melody, it had no powerful beat. That was until Catra heard it. The strong sound that came in four four, like a heart beat through the music, that had been auto tuned into the song effortlessly, like it had been meant to be there. 

Catra gave the pink haired girl an odd look, the girl wearing  _ way  _ too much sparkling highlighter smirked at her. “My major is music!” She yelled over to Catra through the powerful sounds, “when a song doesn't have a strong enough beat for Adora to feel, I edit it for her!” She yelled, and all Catra could think was,  _ wow, what a good friend.  _

Who  _ were  _ these people?

Catra’s eyes were positively stuck on Adora as she watched the girl gently crouch down to the floor, putting the palm of her hand flat against the stage floor and smiling, soft and genuine. 

_ I can see you starring, honey _

Adora cast a look to Catra with the lyrics, as of course she knew what they were. Adora studied all of her lyrics just as she did her steps. She needed to know what they meant, how to invoke feeling into them, how to move with them.

She looked at Catra with a smile as she effortlessly arched her body with the words, pointing to an imaginary figure as she drew back her feet, stepping backwards like she was avoiding an invisible man that only Catra could not see. 

_ Like he’s just your understudy  _

_ Like you’d get your knuckles bloody for me  _

At this Adora threw her head back like she had been punched, and Catra felt her fingernails digging into the fabric of the chair in fear that it was real.

She used the momentum of drawing herself back as if she had been struck to force herself into a gentle spin, the red fabric grazing around her thighs in perfect time with the melody. 

Catra couldn't look away if she wanted to, forgetting to breathe for the entire five minute long dance. 

_ I gave so many signs….  _

_ So many signs _

_ So many signs  _

As the lyrics repeated, Adora spun on her toes, in perfect little circles, with as much rhythm as the even breathes of a sleeping child. 

And just like that the girl collapsed. Catra sprung up from her chair before she noticed how the girl landed with no sound, in the same grateful crouch she had begun the dance in. 

Bow’s eyes were as wide as two glossy moons, and Glimmer pretended to not notice, and instead began cheering, waving her hands around in what looked to be jazz hands while Catra just gawked.

Finally Adora looked up, smiling. Looking at Catra with wide eyes and a victorious smile, she signed something that made Glimmer laugh. 

“What?” Catra demanded, “what did she say?!” 

Glimmer gave her a little shit-eating grin before saying, “standing ovation?” 

Catra looked down to see that she was still standing. Growling, she let her legs buckle and fall back down against the seat. 

Adora skipped on down the aisle and to them with a wide grin, sweating just a bit as she drew the back of her hands over her forehead, “ _ So _ ?” she asked.

Catra literally could not help herself from smiling. She had never felt that before, not being able to conceal her emotions. Was this Adora girl a witch or something?! “Yeah yeah, you win, Blondie.” 

Adora's smile increased by about twenty watts. With no warning, slender arms were cast around Catra’s neck, the girl pulling her over a chair from where she stood one row down. Adora’s chest was jumping up and down, like she was giggling. 

Just as quick as Adora had done it, she had released her. “ _ You owe me ten bucks!”  _

Catra looked at the girl, just now noticing Bow and Glimmer off a few rows, having their own conversation, drowning in their own butterflies. She smiled at the girl, not a smirk, not mischievous, not conniving, just smiling. “How about dinner instead?” Catra asked. 

Adora laughed a bit, until the look of realization of what Catra had just said hitting her as the blush painted her cheeks a rosey pink that no makeup could replicate.

The look of shock melted into a smile, as Adora began nodding like her life depended on it, making Catra laugh.  _ “But it can’t be more than ten dollars!”  _ Adora smiled, “ _ a deal’s a deal.”  _

Catra shook her head as she laughed, “okay. Hotdogs?” She asked, Adora catching Catra’s laughter like a ball in a game of catch. 

“ _ Perfect.”  _

……………. 

“This is impossible!” Catra all but growled in a frustrated sigh over the multiple hard-cover library books she had borrowed from Bow’s dad’s library. 

“It’s not impossible,” Bow smiled, “it’s  _ language.”  _ He said, signing as he spoke. 

Catra signed, looking back down at the images in the books and trying her best to make her fingers replicate the pictures. “ _ I’m trying,”  _ she signed. 

_ “I’m trying,”  _ Bow corrected, making Catra scream out in frustration again. 

Bow gave her a smile, reaching his hand over the table and giving her hand a squeeze. “You know, I think it’s really sweet that you’re learning ASL for your date with Adora.”

Catra felt her face flushed, whipping her hand out of Bow’s touch. “Yeah, whatever,” she mumbled, “you ever gonna grow a pair and ask Sparkles out?” 

Bow turned an impossible shade of red, “she doesn't even like me.” 

“Yeah, and Adora can hear,” Catra smirked. 

Bow rolled his eyes, “you want my help or not?” 

Catra’s eyes turned desperate, “yes.” Bow smiled, and together Bow taught Catra a few basic sentences for her date. 

Years later, Bow taught Catra how to sign  _ ‘I do’.  _

  
  



End file.
